Report condemns Zimbabwe 'terror'

Opponents under attack from security forces and Mugabe supporters, rights group says.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch said that much of the violence had been carried out by the security forces and so-called war veterans loyal to Robert Mugabe, the president.

It said the unrest was centred on areas which had traditionally been Zanu-PF strongholds but in recent years have increasingly turned to the opposition.

Civilians 'armed'

Tiseke Kasambala, a Human Rights Watch researcher who recently returned from Zimbabwe, told Al Jazeera that the group spoke to witnesses and victims who said the army was orchestrating the violence and arming the "war veterans".

Human Rights Watch also said it had received reports that more than 100 polling station officers - most of them teachers and low-ranking civil servants - had been detained in an eastern province.

Kasambala described that as another indication the government and its loyalists were targeting those seen as betraying Mugabe.

Augustine Chihuri, police commissioner-general, said in a statement on Wednesday that police were investigating at least 100 cases of electoral fraud from the elections.

Several officials from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) have been arrested after Mugabe's party claimed electoral officers had been bribed to count votes in favour of the opposition.

"This is a new phenomenon in the electoral history of Zimbabwe. We will leave no stone unturned in our quest to expose the source of this cancerous treachery. All those involved will be brought to book and prosecuted," he said.

'Lucky to survive'

Jonothan Marikita, who was a parliamentary candidate for the MDC in the elections, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that he was attacked with axes.

"They left me unconscious, I couldn't even talk. I was just lucky to survive, even now I don't know how I came here," he said from his hospital bed in Harare, where he was recovering from injuries sustained in an axe attack.